Hi,
Bob reminded me that I forgot a few fun things from my previous post.
We made two trips to the QueenCreek Olive Mill. This is a working olive mill with a restaurant and store. In the store is one wall filled with all the different kinds of olives both regular and stuffed and you can eat ALL YOU want. My favorite was the feta stuffed ones. They also had a bunch of tapenades to taste as well. Our favorite was the asiago, parmesan, and garlic. Man oh man was it delicious.
In another room are all their different olive oils to taste and also balsamci vinegars. My mom had already told us to buy a baquette there to dunk in the olive oils.. Delicious!! Basically we bought a loaf of bread and had lunch. We also had a dark chocolate gelato. I was in HEAVEN.
One day while at Casa Grande we had gone out for a bike ride. We were short a couple minutes of our scheduled time so we took the dirt road that went along the edge of our park. I was out ahead of Bob and he heard a distinctive sound (rattle). He looked down as he was passing just inches from a coiled rattlesnake. We turned back and stayed at a distance to watch it. Soon it meandered across the road and away from the park. We were told that this is common as the weather gets warmer. The snake was about 40 inches long.
The day before we left casa Grande a new hatch of baby quail were in our park. I had never seen them so teeny.
We went to Casa Grande Ruins which is the oldest ruin in Arizona. I don't think we have anything on these ancient people. They were smart. They even had windows that aligned with the sun and moon like Stonehedge. They had built huge waterways for hundreds of miles to irrigate their fields.
While in Casa Grande Bob decided to remove our back bumper system and bike rack to increase the clearance and shorten our length. We attempted to change it ourself on that steep Forest Service Road above Globe previously. Bob engineered a new system that is quite amazing. We gained 7 1/2 inches of ground clearance and shaved off 3 feet of length. We are now ready for all the off road trails that are out there.
On Friday we hiked once again to Picacho Peak this time by ourselves.
Here are a couple of facts about Picacho Peak:
The rock is 4 times older that of the Grand Canyon.
It is the sight of the only battle in Arizona during the civil war resulting with only 1 casualty.
We beat our record from 3 weeks prior of 78 minutes up by 30 seconds and kept our down hill record of 66 minutes. There is alot of loose gravel on this hike which makes it even scarier when you are out of an edge. We used our hiking sticks when possible. They went in and out of our packs as needed. There are alot of places were you have to use cables.
Using hiking sticks are the ticket both on the up hill and the down for additional stability.
We were told that a 150 lb. man walking 5 miles will take something like 50,000 lbs off his knees. Amazing right?
After all the cycling on the flats, although with a ton of wind, we are happy to have the climb.
I am having trouble posting additional pics on this page so I will attempt to post them by themselves. The picture of Bob's feet on the summit was taken to show our trailer down in the distance but the camera only focused on Bob's feet. On a subsequent picture you should see our trailer down in an overflow lot. It is 1800 feet below us.
Yestersay (Saturday) we hiked Ventana Canyon in the Catalina Mountains to Maiden Pools. It was a beautiful hike with Tucson in the distant South. We crossed a dry, very rocky river bed multiple times in our hike. It ended after a steep ascent of 1400 feet at a very welcome shady area with pools in the river. There were many birds at this tiny oasis in the desert. There were so many cactus lining the narrow path that you had to watch what you were doing.
Today Bob is complaining of sore shins and I can feel my glutes once again. We are hoping to stay indoors today and watch a movie. Hooray.
Our high will be in the 90's.
Tomorrow Bob flies to Uyah for a few days. He will return to Arizona on next Saturday and then I will head to Salt Lake on the 29th for a few days.
Love to all,
Bob & Lori
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